Songbirds(73)

‘Last one yesterday afternoon.’

‘Good.’

The road ahead was dark, lit only by the moon. There was a fine layer of frost in the fields, luminous in the night. It reminded me of the unusually cold late October morning, not so long ago, when I had seen the mouflon in the woods, when I had rushed home to tell Nisha.

Eventually we turned onto a dirt track and the road became darker, shadowed by trees. It was so dark I felt like we might be heading off a cliff and into the sea, but the sea was miles away. The van kept rumbling on until we came to an abrupt stop in a clearing beneath a huge oak tree.

Seraphim got out without saying a word and opened the doors at the back of the van. I followed him and he handed me the shoulder bags holding the lime sticks, calling devices, three covered-up cages with sleeping birds, one large mist net, and finally a rifle.

‘A rifle?’ I said.

‘It’s hunting season. I thought we could hunt some game. We’re allowed on Wednesdays and Fridays in November.’

I took the rifle from him and he turned to me and smiled with his over-stretched grin. Since when did Seraphim care about hunting regulations? I knew that November was a good time to hunt hare, chukar partridge, black francolin, wood-pigeon and woodcocks, but there is a limit on the quotas that hunters are allowed to take – something like two hare and two partridges per hunter per hunting day. But I felt like a hypocrite thinking about the quotas when on the ground by my feet lay the rolled mist net – non-selective and indiscriminate of quotas.

We carried the gear into the woods. As we unrolled the mist net and secured it on poles between two junipers, I remembered walking with my grandfather through the forest, and how he had explained that in ancient times the island was almost completely covered with impenetrable forests.

‘Imagine what it would have been like back then!’ he’d said. ‘For wildlife to be undisturbed by human hands that take so much more than what they need.’

‘Where are you?’ Seraphim called out, sharply.

‘Right here.’

He shook his head, pushing the pole deeper into the earth. ‘You’re miles away. Focus, man. Imagine you have fourteen pairs of eyes. Be alert.’

I nodded and he signalled for me to lift the covers from the cages. I did so. The birds remained true to the darkness and kept their songs to themselves for the time being.

‘Oksana is pregnant,’ he said.

I forced myself to sound happy. ‘Wow, that’s great news! Congratulations, my friend.’

‘We had the first scan the other day. You should have heard the heartbeat. You know, it’s the most amazing thing in the world, that this little human is growing inside her. I’m going to be a father.’

His eyes shone, but his smile held a hint of fear or apprehension and I saw in this the boy I once knew.

‘You’ll be great,’ I said.

‘I’ve started to do up the nursery. I’m painting murals on the walls.’

‘What are they of ?’ I asked.

‘Oh, kids’ stuff. You know, a waterfall, mountains, hot-air balloons, that sort of thing.’

‘Sounds nice.’

We proceeded to place the lime sticks on the bushes and trees in the dark. We didn’t use torches in case the area was being patrolled. We worked in silence, listening carefully for any unusual sounds or movement.

So, Seraphim was going to be a father. Seraphim. It made my intestines turn. A flash of blood in the toilet bowl. Nisha with her hands crossed over her stomach. I watched Seraphim’s movements in the darkness – they were fluid and discreet, like a shadow. I wanted to ask him again about that Sunday. Had Nisha really not turned up? Did he have something to do with her disappearance? He couldn’t. I mean, he couldn’t. Seraphim was an arsehole, the lowest of the low when it came to certain things, but he couldn’t possibly be involved in something as sinister as a missing person, or even five missing women and two children, if they were connected. I could see the fuzzy outline of his mouth and eyes. He seemed to be smiling. He was pleased with himself.

Seraphim, of all people, was going to be a dad. The prick.

When we finished setting up, we lit a small fire and waited for dawn, for the birds to descend into the trees. The calling devices sang in the dark in preparation and the mechanical but beautiful song reached us as if in a dream. The caged birds wouldn’t sing until the sun rose. We toasted olives and haloumi on skewers over the fire. Seraphim had his rifle close

to him.

‘What are you hoping to kill?’ I said.

‘Maybe some hare, that sort of thing, after we’ve collected the birds. Wait for the wildlife to wake up.’

I nodded and removed a warm olive from the skewer with my teeth. A black olive, bitter and grainy. There was not much conversation between us. Seraphim was alert all the time, his head darting about whenever he heard a sound. I kept my eye on the rifle. It bothered me, the way Seraphim fingered the trigger, the way he kept it so close.

It was the moment when the light of dawn cracked through the darkness and the birds in their cages and all the free birds began to sing, that I heard the crunch of leaves. Of course, Seraphim heard it to, and he was up immediately, gazing into the dawn light. I thought that was it, finally we would be caught, and more than anything I just felt relief.

But what appeared seconds later in the clearing beneath the trees was not a man in ranger’s uniform, but the mouflon ovis.